Today is polling day

and it is also Open Day for the knitting guild I belong to. 
As some readers of this blog know I have already voted and, after assisting two visually impaired friends this morning, I can go and - hopefully - help set up the display.
Open Day coincides with History Month - a statewide affair. This year's theme for the guild is "knitting in the late 20thC".
A request was made for items from that era - if people had any.  I had to smile to myself. The Senior Cat's wardrobe has more than one item like that. I have some too.
We make clothes last in this house. It is only a couple of weeks back that Middle Cat and I finally persuaded the Senior Cat he needed to be rid of "the winter dressing gown". It was a relic from the early days of his marriage. It was there before I was born. It was one of those very heavy woollen affairs. (Anyone old enough to remember back that far will know exactly what I mean.) It was frayed and worn - and recently a tear appeared where the fabric had grown thinner still. Oh yes, the dressing gown. 
The Senior Cat complained that he was finding it hard to get it on and off - but he refused to give it up. No, it wasn't something our mother had given him. His mother had bought it for him at the draper about 100m from their home on Military Rd. 
My paternal grandmother was very careful of clothes. Her wardrobe was sparse. She didn't see the need for a lot of clothes. She would buy good things and care for them. They were classic rather than high fashion. It is yet another thing I was taught by her - although by example rather than direct teaching.  
The dressing gown? She would have told the Senior  Cat it needed to go some years ago.
And I looked at his "woollies". Almost all the hand knits  were made by my mother. 
   "How can you tell the difference?" the Senior Cat asked as I put something to one side saying I had made it.
   "Hers have side seams. Mine are knitted in one piece," I told him. Mine are too recently made for the Open Day. I took two garments that were "TV knits"...from those seemingly endless plain pattern instructions that were popular when television became more common here.  He still wears them - around the house. They date back to the late 60's and early 70's. I remember them being made. 
My mother was not really interested in knitting. It was something she did because it had been necessary at first - and then later because she thought she should. Her garments were plain stocking stitch for the most part. The one garment she made me with a pattern in it had a major mistake in it. Fortunately I was not living at home at the time. My paternal grandmother quietly undid what needed to be undone and knitted it again - sans mistake. 
I have passed over some things I have made too. They can use what they like - or nothing at all. I have kept things for years - and they are still able to be worn. There is my Norwegian pullover, the vest with the rampant lion and the cardigan with the Aran thistle. I designed them all myself because I am too lazy to use patterns designed by other people.
But there is one thing I have not included and that is the "gardening jumpers" - those pullovers made out of whatever happened to be lying around or picked up cheaply at the charity shop. They are old enough. My mother made them and she died almost twenty years ago. Those disreputable garments are older than that.  I looked at them. They have all been mended. I have re-knitted the cuffs and the bottom bands. I have darned them and one has a knitted patch where it was caught on something. They are covered in paint and varnish stains.
I may have to knit another "gardening jumper".